3 FEBRUARY 1961, Page 4

Sir Angus Watson

uOR a quarter of a century Sir Angus Watson played a considerable part in the life of the Spectator. Where another man might have been content to retire after a highly successful business career—he was head of 'Skippers'—he chose to go into publishing, in the firm of Ivor Nicholson and Watson and in the Spectator, of which he became Vice-Chairman. Although he retired from the Board in 1958, he continued to take a keen interest in the paper, often calling in when he was in London to find out how we were faring.

His enthusiasm for such causes as temperance reform may have given the impression to people who did not know him of an austere, unbending nature, but this was a notion that half an hour in his agreeable company was enough to dispel.